Sep 5, 2008

Blast from the past-Richard Williams

It's 2008-do you know where you were 19 years ago?Thanks to Steve Hickner for the photo from his distant past(for those that don't know him, that's Steve with his hands clasped in front of him).

This was taken after Dick Williams had been given a few Oscars for "Roger Rabbit"-a film Steve was doing various things on which in turn led to his relocating to London and setting up Amblimation. What a byzantine business we work in.

See how many faces you can place(Steve looks the same now as he did then-he's a cinch). I'll come back with the IDs later.

I see Mark Kausler and Pat Sito for sure. It looks like Tom Sito in the back row third from right. Tom and Pat are old friends and I've had the pleasure of meeting Mark. I think that's Dorse Lanpher on the right in the middle row, though I've never had the pleasure. Is that Andreas Deja to the right of Dick?

Joe Haidar next to Hickner. Vera Lanpher Pacheco next to Dorse, James Baxter in his more hirsute days above the pixieish older woman whom I don't recognize. Who is she? Dave and Debbie Spafford flank Williams. Carl Bell left of Dorse. Nik Ranieri between Joe Ranft and Sito. Roger Chiasson? and Hans Bacher in the back. Can't place bearded guy next to Kausler, older guy next to Baxter, and clean shaven guy above him. This was the LA crew for RR sans Matt O'Callaghan, I believe.

LA Crew was headed up by Dale Baer , and included animators Matt O' Callaghan , Frans Vischer, Barry Temple, Bruce Smith, Dave Spafford, Mark Kausler, Dave Pacheco . Assistants : Jane Baer, Renee Holt, Brett Newton, David Nethery,Kent Culotta, Gilda Palinginis, Eric Daniels, Carl Bell, Kent Holaday Dolly Baker, and several others , including freshly minted Cal Arts kid inbetweener Brenda Chapman (whatever happened to that girl ? I heard she did pretty well ) ... I know I'm leaving out a lot of names , sorry to anyone I skipped over . I have to check the crew list again . When I think back on that time period from Roger - to - Mermaid and onwards there was so much going on and we all tended to work on all the pictures overlapping , so those years all kind of run together for me.

There's a complete LA crew photo of all of us in front of the old Grand Central Airport Terminal building which I will have to dig out and post on my blog. The old airport terminal building was right next door to the warehouse building on Airway where the "LA Crew" (Glendale actually) for Roger was housed.

Kausler and Spaff worked on the picture in both London and Glendale.

The photo shown above is of a post-Oscar lunch that Dick had as a little mini-reunion for all the London Crew members of Roger Rabbit who were then in LA. This reunion/Oscar celebration lunch was during production on Mermaid. James and Nik had come over from London , as had Steve Hickner, Joe Haidar, Tom and Pat Sito , Dorse and Vera Lanpher ... all on Mermaid at the time this photo was taken.

Oh, and the young man behind Hans Bacher is Alex Williams. Eric Goldberg was not on this crew. At this time he was still in London with his studio Pizzazz. He came out to LA to do the Genii in Aladdin the following year.

Thanks to Jez i feel older now .i do remember clearly that friendly lunch among notorious artists and espescially the moment when M.WILLIAMS invited each one of us to stand beside him to hold the oscars for a personal photo right before this one was taken ,thought that was really kind . don't you think so lads?